Humble Bundle had a Boomer Shooter bundle (opens in new tab)and games like Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (opens in new tab) wear the label of your choice with pride. Maybe it’s time to admit and accept that the 90s retro FPS subgenre is getting stuck with a silly label because it sounds funny. (And it sounds funny, no argument here.) Or maybe it’s time to get prescriptive. At the risk of looking like the kind of person who claims that run-based permadeath games aren’t roguelikes unless they’re fully ASCII, here’s an opportunity to make your case for an alternative.
What should boomer shooters be called?
Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.
Phil Savage, Editor-in-Chief, UK: Sure, Boomer Shooters, why not? No, it’s not a great name, I’ll admit that. But you know what else isn’t great: basically every genre name that’s ever stuck. We have a subgenre of RPGs, CRPGs, where the C stands for computer. It excludes a whole range of RPGs that are also on a computer.
And en masse multiplayer online game might have made sense when the internet was new and this was all very exciting, but the implied sense of wonder just feels strange these days. As for MOBAs, where do you even start? Online multiplayer battle arenas? That’s just all PvP games. Sorry, Quake is now a MOBA. I don’t make the rules.
So yeah, whatever, we collectively gave a genre a crazy name. But maybe that’s better than pretending there’s some logic to it.
Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: Now what, Gen Z RPGs? Millennial MMOs?
I know we all enjoy a good rhyme, but “boomer shooter” misinterprets history and creates confusion about who actually played these games. As someone who spends most of the day thinking about describing games with words, you can imagine how this gets under my skin. Mine dad is a true baby boomer, someone born between the end of World War II and 1964. If you were 32 or younger when Doom came out in 1993, you are not a boomer. It’s that simple. I like to call them retro shooters, ’90s FPS, or anything else that isn’t slightly age-appropriate.
Fraser Brown, online editor: In the same way that millennial became shorthand for “young avocado fans,” boomer has become a catch-all for “shit that’s old.” This means we can keep using it conveniently even if the real boomers are all dead. It is a practical evolution. With that in mind, it seems reasonable to call these things boomer shooters. It’s also fun to say, and a pun to boot, giving it an edge over almost any other genre. It’s evocative in a way befitting these bombastic relics, and while it might be a little crazy, so are boomer shooters. I say let it live!
Robin Valentine, editor: I’m honestly really amazed at how much ‘boomer shooter’ has caught on in the last few years – as Evan says, it has very little basis in the actual age of the audience for them, and the vibes of clingy nostalgia don’t really go along with how it is. word ‘boomer’ is commonly used (as in, to dub something out of control bullshit).
I don’t understand why people don’t just call them ‘Doom-likes’. People like to call everything a ‘like’ these days. And it has a nice symmetry with ‘Doom clone’, which is what many games were called in the wake of the original game, before ‘first-person shooter’ caught on.
To be honest, I’ve long come to terms with the fact that gaming will always be full of absolutely awful genre names. ‘Metroidvania’? ‘Soulsborne’? ‘MOBA’? ‘eSports’? We shouldn’t be mentioning things at all.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It’s a shame that Twitch is called Twitch, because back in the day you could call old-fashioned fast shootybang games twitch shooters and everyone knew what you meant. Now it sounds like a different name for people who have just committed a hate crime.
I am using Gen X FPS. It will never catch on.
Zlot: We’ve stopped calling them Doom Clones?
Brian Boru: Misty Fraggers! Geezer Gunners. Assisted shooters.
JarlBSoD: What exactly is a boomer shooter? I kind of doubt that many, even if they existed, started playing shooters in their 30s – 50s in the 90s. Get a bit of the feeling that most people who play games in the 90’s were born in the 70’s or 80’s, ie NOT boomers. So let’s call them Doomclones as usual. Go on, there’s nothing to see here! It should in any case be called Retro shooters if one doesn’t want to use the term Doom Clone.
alms: I’m a millennial and 90s shooters were a golden age for me. I think I’d call them Disk Dynasty Definitives. But Boomer Shooters rolls off the tongue better.
Wooden Dish: The early FPS games were my generation. I’m Gen X, not a boomer. Call them X Games.
McStabStab: DOOM clones have always been the name for this… even though they’re actually all Wolfenstein 3D clones. Corridor Shooter is another name I’ve heard a lot.
red mark_: Seriously, boomer shooters just remind me of a bunch of old guys who use boomsticks galore…
C Parson: Arthritis Inducers.
Zed Clamp: Crap graphic action shooter.
Sarafan: I believe this genre was called “ego shooter” in some countries in the past. Not that I think it’s a good idea to practice necromancy over this sentence as it was mediocre to say the least. I’m trying to take the question seriously, so I prefer the term retro shooter. It goes without saying. The phrase is better for those new to the industry. Everyone can immediately say that it is a shooter made in the old style. We can of course discuss that not every boomer shooter is a retro shooter, but I think we should simplify things and not complicate them for no serious reason.
Pifanjr: I think DOOM clone works best. The genre definition of video games seems to be broadening and/or video games combine aspects of different genres, meaning that the best description is usually comparing it to specific other games rather than/in addition to putting a genre label on it.
flashn00b: I think I like the “Doom Clone” nomenclature more, but that will probably show my age.
Hell, Boomer Shooter seems to be more or less a generalized format of FPS, and I think games like Ultrakill, Turbo Overkill, and to a lesser extent Doom Eternal paved the way for an offshoot of the Boomer Shooter known as the motion shooter. I think for more traditional old-fashioned style FPS games, Doom Clone would probably be more suitable, while the new school boost-dashing/wallrunning/etc. would probably fit more into the “movement shooter” category.
steijn: Killer boomer.
Volleyball: I would call it ‘Golden Era FPS’ or ‘Golden Era Shooter’, that was the 90’s and early 00’s.
However, I’m browsing through some of my 90’s PC Gamer magazines and the term “Doom clones” was used A LOT by PCG to describe any FPS that wasn’t Doom, but came out after Doom, even System Shock and Descent, those were there is nothing like Doom other than having a first person perspective haha.
spice: Damn, my perspective on this went on a roller coaster ride when I read the posts. Confused at first about the existence of “boomer shooter” in general, then thinking it was about explosions, then the idea that it’s a reference to baby boomers? I mean, my dad was a pretty young baby boomer, and he had no interest in FPSs whatsoever. That’s anecdotal, I know, but I really think 2.5D/3D gaming was Gen X’s purview in the first place.
I’m only a handful of years away from being lumped together in “Millennial”, but I still have very clear memories of the release of Wolfenstein3D, Doom, Quake, Heretic, etc. And most of the programmers were quite young (though older than me.) Heck, I programmed (mediocre) text adventures when I was 14-18. (By the time I was 19, the genre was seemingly dead and buried, only to come back to life a few years later under the name Interactive Fiction. Or maybe it was always there and I just didn’t know where to look. But I digress.)
If I were to label games as “Boomer,” it would be the early arcade games (Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Asteroids), pinball and text adventures. And solitary.
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